Once vital hub nearly dormant

The post office moved out of downtown's Federal Building this week, marking the first time since 1933 no one's going postal at 401 N. San Joaquin St.

Michael Fitzgerald

The post office moved out of downtown's Federal Building this week, marking the first time since 1933 no one's going postal at 401 N. San Joaquin St.

The Federal Building, once Stockton's main post office and a hive of federal offices - more, an expression of 1930 Stockton's ambitions - now stands all but empty.

"It's creepy coming in here when you're the only person here, especially when you come in late at night," said Victoria Taylor, a Food and Drug Administration inspector.

Taylor is one of only four FDA employees remaining in offices in the cavernous ground floor. A few other federal stiffs still toil out of offices upstairs.

Sad. The Federal Building may be the coolest building in town. Certainly, it's on the short list, alongside City Hall, Hotel Stockton and the Bob Hope Theatre.

But while many Stocktonians visit those buildings, the Federal Building languishes in obscurity. One just doesn't have much business with the Food and Drug Administration.

Yet this place is praised by the National Register of Historic Places, and it boasts several sorts of significance.

One of 1,300 built in the Hoover administration's enormous federal building program in the 1920s and '30s, the building is the best example of Depression-era design in the region.

Back then, one architectural school believed classical Roman architecture (via 18th-century France) best for federal buildings. Another school championed new ideas.

Our Federal Building elegantly mixes neoclassical touches, such as the colonnade on the building's granite face, with the spare, flat planes of Art Moderne. It shows 1930s Stocktonian urbanites embraced the new.

The location is also telling. A citywide argument over the site ended with a spot on downtown's northern fringe. A harbinger of city growth.

On Friday, I stood beneath a couple Moderne federal eagles and knocked on the imposing building's locked door. A security guard admitted me to the lobby.

Our voices echoed as we crossed the terrazzo-and-brass floor. What a wonderful space. Absolutely first class. All marble, brass, copper and white oak.

The high-ceilinged lobby runs the length of the 194-foot building. Chandeliers that once hung there are gone. Brass and glass writing tables still stand.

The building once boasted snazzy touches, such as neon letters glowing over clerk windows and a pneumatic in-house mail system.

Gilded eagles sit in fields of gilded stars on the walls. Two mid-1930s oil murals, a legacy of Franklin Roosevelt's public art program, still adorn the walls.

One, "Modern Transportation of the Mail," by Franz Bergmann, depicts a modern postal flivver, modern propeller airplane, modern steam locomotive, even a modern paddlewheel riverboat.

The guard let me in on the building's secret: a second-story ladder leads down to a dark, narrow passageway pierced by peepholes above the big mailroom: a 1930s security feature that enabled postal inspectors to spy on suspected mail thieves.

"It's one of the creepiest areas in the building," said the guard, Tony March. "Looks like something from a horror movie. Like people under the stairs."

In addition to the post office, the building once housed federal agencies from a U.S. Navy recruiting office to the IRS, U.S. Engineers and Social Security courts.

Most federal employees moved to March Lane a year ago. The post office, which over the years was demoted from main station, moved over to Channel Street this week.

The county Office of Education plans to re-use the Federal Building for offices and classrooms.

"It's sad," said the FDA's Taylor. "So much of this building is beautiful - the murals and everything else - the thought of putting children in here freaks me out."

The federal wheel is coming full circle. A president is taking office with plans to ease a severe recession with giant public works projects. Let's hope it brings Stockton a keeper like the Federal Building.